High School Graduates: The Influence of Academics and Attendance

Public awareness of the severity of the high school completion problem in terms of its educational, social, psychological, and economic impacts has grown in recent years. Using ex post facto data, this non-experimental, correlational study was designed to determine whether there are differences in academic performance and school attendance between those first-time 9th-grade students who graduated from high school within fours years of entry and those who did not graduate. Data from two cohorts were examined. The cohorts reflect two populations of students who were first-time ninth graders in a local school district in the state of Delaware during 2006–2007 and 2007–2008. Students who were transferred to another public or private high school in the U.S., died, or moved to another country at any time prior to the expected graduation point of 4 years after the students first entered ninth grade were excluded from this study. The study utilized discriminant function analysis to examine different facets of graduating or not graduating from high school within 4 years of entry in an effort to determine the significance of relationships between the predictor variables and two categorical groups (graduates and non-graduates). Stepwise discriminant function analysis was also used to test the significant contribution of the independent variables to the criterion variable. In addition, a double cross-validation approach was employed to minimize chance associations. The results revealed that student school attendance and academic performance were significant variables in predicting whether an entering 9th-grade student would graduate or not graduate from high school within 4 years.